This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Pardon the intrusion, but I am asserting my right (such as it is) as editor in chief to seize temporary control of The Atlantic Daily from Tom Nichols (who I imagine is secretly grateful for this hijacking) in order to share good news about our magazine.

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekThis week, five planets are aligning in the night sky: Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus, and Mars will all be visible just after sunset, alongside the moon.

Updated at 5:30 p.m. ET on March 29, 2023.Several years ago, astronomers pointed a telescope at another star and discovered something remarkable: seven planets, each one about the same size as Earth. The planets were quite close to their small star—all seven of their orbits would fit inside Mercury’s.

Nearly half a decade has elapsed since I last worked in the fashion industry, but one thing from my previous career remains a compulsion to this day: I look at people’s purses. In the brain space that might otherwise be occupied by dear childhood memories or the dates and times of future doctor appointments, I tend to an apparently undeletable mental spreadsheet of who is carrying what. Bottega Veneta Cassette, green padded leather, Soho, 20-something woman.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.On Sunday, news broke that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had abruptly fired the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, after Gallant pleaded for a delay in the judiciary-overhaul plan put forward by Netanyahu’s government.

The best sessions of Dungeons & Dragons walk the line between stirring tales of teamwork and achingly nerdy jokes. A barbarian, a bard, a sorcerer, and a druid walk into an inn—what happens next? Why, deeds of derring-do, of course, or at least a bit of hearty axe-swinging. The collaborative tabletop game invites every player to get creative; the most inspired renditions plop players into a fantasy world and ask them to improvise their way through.

Being alive and on the internet in 2023 suddenly means seeing hyperrealistic images of famous people doing weird, funny, shocking, and possibly disturbing things that never actually happened. In just the past week, the AI art tool Midjourney rendered two separate convincing, photographlike images of celebrities that both went viral. Last week, it imagined Donald Trump’s arrest and eventual escape from jail.

Among the many difficulties imposed upon America by the pandemic, the scourge of anti-vaccine sentiment—and the preventable deaths caused as result—ranks among the most frustrating, especially for infectious-disease doctors like me.People who are hospitalized with COVID-19 rarely refuse therapy, but acceptance of vaccines to help prevent infection has been considerably more limited.